AllFreeNovel
Share Us
"Be careful, Father de Leon," Atticus said with a sneer. "No matter how you train him, or how thick the chain around his neck is, all dogs bite."
I watched intently, refusing to blink as they turned to walk away. I wouldn't have put it past the bastard to fake us out and take the first cheap shot he got. Despite the Order’s claim to honor, that was neither a virtue nor a vice Atticus seemed to possess.
When they were finally out of sight, I turned to Eddie, reaching out to touch his shoulder. "Are you all right?" I asked.
"I'm fine," he muttered. "Physically, at least. My pride is another matter."
"You can tell your pride we’re fortunate that we got away with our lives," I told him.
“Who was that guy?” he asked, casting a wary glance the way they had gone.
“Atticus is the head of the Order’s military division,” I answered. “And Arrow’s brother.”
His eyes widened incredulously, but the shock didn’t last long. “Yeah, I guess I can see that,” he muttered, still rubbing his temples like he had a lingering migraine. I could imagine it wasn't going to go away anytime soon. “What did that girl do to me?”
"Some kind of sonic frequency only a wolf can pick up on would be my guess," I answered. "She's psychic."
"Psychic?" he echoed. "I thought they didn't take infusions."
"They don't," I answered. "The hunters of the Order are different. They come from a long bloodline that's carefully guarded to facilitate strength, among other things. Some of them possess natural gifts, and even I don't know what all of them are.”
He fell silent for a moment, considering it. I reached out to take his face in my hands, studying him closely. Small droplets of blood were trickling down from both his ears.
"How are you feeling?" I asked.
"Like someone put my brain in a blender," he answered, staring at me like a deer caught in headlights. Somehow, he seemed more nervous that I was looking at him than he had been around the hunters. An utterly absurd creature, if ever there was one. "But I'm okay."
I touched the blood trickling down his left earlobe before releasing him. "We should get you back to the Abbey so the doctor can take a look at you, all the same.”
He nodded, following me down a side road where we could circle back around and get to where I had left my car.
Eddie was silent for a few blocks before he said, "Father de Leon?"
"Yes?" I asked without turning back. Lingering wouldn’t be wise.
"Did you mean what you said?" he asked. "About me being a hybrid?"
I had expected that to come up, but part of me hoped he would be too unsettled by the mindfuck to think to ask about it.
I wasn't sure how much I wanted to admit to him, and I wasn't quite sure of the answer myself.
"I don't know," I finally admitted. "It's possible, but the truth is, we don't know exactly what the process is for creating a hybrid, and it's been done so infrequently that any information that does exist hasn't been replicated enough times to be reliable."
"That seems like a pretty big risk to take," he murmured.
"I'm inclined to agree with you," I said. "But it's not my place to question Father Marius's orders."
Not openly, at any rate.
"So basically, I'm a science experiment.”
I glanced back at him. "More or less. But you shouldn't worry about it too much. You survived another hunt, and that's more than many hunters can say.”
"Yeah," he said quietly. "I guess."
ChapterEighteen
CASTOR
